If Porcelain Isn't Your Cup Of Tea, East German City Will Change Your Tastes

November 26, 1989|By Joy Schaleben Lewis, Special To The Sentinel

MEISSEN, EAST GERMANY — Mention Meissen china to Germans - East or West - and the response is ''wunderbar!'' To Germans and porcelain lovers the world over, Meissen china is incomparable. In the regal museum that houses the world's largest collection of this exquisite porcelain, I soon saw why it commands adoration.

Meissen is a pretty medieval town of narrow lanes, quiet corners and courtyards. It lies deep in East Germany tucked between the sunny vineyards of the Elbe River about 25 miles northwest of Dresden. When my East German friends, Monika and Harold, suggested an afternoon at a porcelain museum, I thought, ''An entire building of cups, saucers and plates - how dull!''

Wrong. The gray ponderous building in the heart of the city may look stodgy, its contents may sound humdrum, but - inside, wow! The Meissen Porcelain Museum is a palace of shiny parquet floors, crystal chandeliers, ceiling frescoes, arched windows and doorways, intricate moldings, wide, graceful staircases and marble columns trimmed in gold. Bright, airy and elegant, it's the perfect setting for its precious porcelain.

Baroque, rococo, classical, abstract - no matter the style - color variations are infinite, designs number in the thousands. Adding picturesque ornamentation and the fact that it is the world's hardest china and I began to grasp the fascination this porcelain holds for admirers.

Meissen porcelain may be tough, but drop it, and it still shatters. Astonishingly, many priceless museum pieces are not locked behind protective glass. Enormous vases and sculptures - like the peacock, court jester or giant vulture - stand nonchalantly out in the open, perched on wooden blocks.

As I leaned over a huge vase delicately painted with a profusion of butterflies and flowers, I expected to hear the all too familiar verbotten (forbidden) from a nearby museum guard. But no, not one verbotten, not a single ''do not touch.'' Hordes of schoolchildren, moms, pops, and devoted Meissen lovers move freely throughout the museum close enough to brush the irreplaceable china.

Here and there, tables are beautifully draped and elegantly set. If there were chairs, it would be hard to resist sitting down for coffee and kuchen, or better, a 10-course banquet. Only one table setting is roped off. It showcases a stunning, snow-white, 2,000-piece china set created by the great 18th-century master, Johann Joachim Kaendler.

Not only did I breathe in the precious porcelain, but artisans created East Germany's coveted export right before my eyes. On the ground floor there are five demonstration halls. Tours are in German. If a visitor doesn't speak the language, a guide opens a drawer jammed with tape recordings in Japanese, Hungarian, Arabic, Turkish, Korean, French, Russian, Chinese, Finnish and, of course, English.

The first hall gives the basics: a brief history of porcelain and a simple explanation of materials and processes involved in making china. In the others, local artisans demonstrate their amazing skills. There is no mass production. Each piece is made by hand - from start to finish.

As I watched, an English recording explained what each artisan was doing and why. The first molded vases and plates on a potter's wheel. The next deftly attached flowers, leaves, hats and boots to a figurine.

The last two were painters. One painted Meissen's most famous design - the cobalt-blue onion pattern. Another created multicolored flowers. Meissen makes 180 basic colors. Its formulas are as secret today as they were when they were developed.

How did this most famous china come to be? Greed. In the early 1700s hundreds of alchemists vied to discover a formula for transforming base metals into gold. One such noted alchemist was Johann Friedrich Boettger, a Berlin pharmacist of old Prussia.

Just as the king of Prussia got wind of Boettger's talent, the young man fled to Saxony. The Prussian king begged the elector of Saxony, Augustus the Strong, who also happened to be the king of Poland, to extradite Boettger. Augustus refused. Always short of cash, Augustus prayed the alchemist might make gold for him and no one else.

Meanwhile, the Saxon Court was spending large sums importing Chinese and Japanese porcelain - in those days, an ultimate display of wealth and authority. When the alchemist failed to create gold, a prominent physicist convinced Augustus that what Boettger really should do was uncover the secret of fine porcelain.